"Management change is a part of any business. Jerome has decided to pursue his career outside of Nissan Group. We acknowledge and thank him for his contribution to the organisation and wish him luck for his future assignment," Nissan India informed ETAuto.

Saigot, who joined the Japanese carmaker in 2010, was instrumental in the success of the company’s Datsun brand in Russia. He joined Nissan’s India operations as vice president in 2015, and was promoted as MD of Nissan & Datsun India in October last year. “Jerome’s resignation was also announced at the townhall held at Nissan today (Tuesday),” one of the people said.

Management change is a part of any business. Jerome has decided to pursue his career outside of Nissan Group. We acknowledge and thank him for his contribution to the organisation and wish him luck for his future assignment.Nissan India

This is the third senior-level resignation at Nissan in India since June last year. Director of sales & marketing Satinder Singh Bajwa had left the company to join Mahindra & Mahindra as vice president for its small commercial vehicle business. Vice president-marketing Sanjay Gupta resigned in June last year after a stint of one year and seven months at Nissan India.

Apart from these resignations, former managing director Arun Malhotra, who moved to an adviser role in September 2017, left the company in March 2018.

Saigot, with strong sales & marketing expertise, played a key role in launching the Datsun brand in India. Previously, he had also worked at the PSA Group for about 12 years in France and Russia.

The resignation of its top executive in India comes at a time when the Japanese carmaker is pushing itself to achieve its long pending target of a 5% market share. In the last few years, the company made various course corrections and revisions in strategy to boost sales.

“Nissan is growing steadily towards achieving a 5% market share by 2020-21,” the company told ET in an email recently.

In 2015, the Indian unit shifted its focus more towards domestic sales as part of a strategic change to achieve parity in local sales and exports from the country within five years.

But its local market share has fallen since, to 1.6% in fiscal 2018 when industry sales were 3.28 million passenger vehicles, from 1.8% in fiscal 2015.

The falling numbers seem to have an impact on its network and dealer partners, as over 50 dealerships parted ways with Nissan since 2013.

Nissan also slipped from being the second largest exporter of passenger vehicles from India in 2013-14 to the third in 2014-15 and further down to sixth position in FY18.

The company, meanwhile, is working to introduce electric car Nissan LEAF in India. It is also testing e-Power technology in the country.

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